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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

The news media (well, NPR, at least) has been covering the
recent Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip, making me more and more
unsettled.Years ago, I was closely
monitoring the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors.I even compiled a 200 page chronology of
violence and its numerous resultant deaths.I also served as the faculty advisor to a group of Palestinian students
at State Cloud State University.In
1990, following the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi army, the U.S. moved troops
into Saudi Arabia and launched an invasion of Kuwait and then southern Iraq.My pacifist principles motivated me to engage
in an act of civil resistance by blocking entrance to a federal building the
morning after the U.S. invasion.My
arrest (with about 30 other people) led to judicial proceedings that were
eventually dropped “in the interest of justice,” according to the district
attorney.Nonetheless, the war, my
arrest, and activities involved in mounting a defense, took an emotional toll
on me, and I ended up scaling back the anti-imperialism, anti-war activism that
had motivated me in years past. Perhaps
it is merely due to my current exposure to news reports, but Israel’s recent
bombardment of the Gaza Strip has re-awakened my indignity over Israel’s
violence or more to the point, U.S. support for Israeli violence.It is ironic that the U.S. is considering
greater sanctions against Russia for manufacturing the equipment that shot down
a Malaysian passenger jet, while it manufactures the fighter planes that are
killing Palestinian civilians and provides other military, intelligence, and diplomatic
assistance to Israel.

The latest data I can find regarding the death toll in the
conflict indicates that nearly 700 Palestinians have been killed.A list of the names and ages indicate that those
killed represent a broad swath of Palestinian society, men, women, infants,
children, and the very aged. (See http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/20528.) Thirty Israelis have been killed.Two of the Israelis were civilians, most of the
remainder were soldiers likely killed in the ground invasion.At least one was killed by friendly fire. The
hostility between these peoples is certainly driven by many factors, but surely
the most potent factor is the death of friends and family members killed by the
opposition.In this instance, the
responsibility for death falls overwhelmingly with the Israelis.It does not take subtle analysis to
understand that the main drivers of this animosity are the actions by the
Israeli government in launching air strikes that they know full well will
result in the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians.The justifications coming from Israel are that they are
responding to threats to their people as any nation would and that they must
degrade the Palestinian capacity to inflict harm on Israel.Three things should be noted here.First, the capacity of Palestinians to
inflict harm on Israel is minimal, indeed, pathetic.After weeks of rockets launched against
Israel, there has been very little property damage and nearly no one killed by
those rockets. Second, Israel’s claim to respond to threats as any other nation
would ignores the fact that the Gaza Strip is occupied by Israel, and consequently,
Israel has a legal responsibility to maintain normal life there.I’m certain that if Israelis were expected to
live under the conditions in the Gaza Strip they would not find this “normal
life.” Resistance to the occupation is
of a very different moral character than cross-border aggression between
independent states.Third, Just War
Theory requires that belligerents refrain from killing non-combatants and that retaliation
be proportional to an assault.The list
of people killed by Israeli air strikes reveals that non-combatants make up a majority of the people killed by
Israel and of course a ratio of more than 20-1 is hardly proportional.It begs the question: “How many innocent people
is Israel willing to kill in order to “protect” its population from Palestinian
rockets that pose such a relatively weak threat?” Apparently hundreds are acceptable. Are 1,000 innocent deaths acceptable? Are 4,000 innocent deaths acceptable. Is there no limit to the number of innocent people that Israel may kill to "protect" its citizens -- not from actual killings, but from the threat of killings? As this number gets larger and larger, it
becomes clear how little regard the Israeli government has for human life and
how inflated its regard is for its own citizens’ lives.Nationalism (if you buy into that) might
justify a greater regard for the lives of one’s compatriots, but human decency sets
limits.Today, Israel’s government is
devoid of human decency.

And now for the real reason I’m writing this:U.S. support for Israel makes us complicit in
the war crimes that are currently unfolding.It is ironic that the U.S. is considering greater sanction against
Russia for having manufactured the rocket which destroyed a Malaysian airliner
when Israel is employing jets made in the U.S. that are killing a much greater number
of people.We must call upon our
government to end its historic support for the Israeli government and recognize
that it – as having the most powerful military in the region – bears the
primary responsibility for the situation within its borders and the territories
it occupies (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip).We must call upon our government to stop supporting the purveyors of
violence and insist that they reach an agreement with the Palestinians that
recognizes the basic human rights of the Palestinians.

Having written all this, I must acknowledge that U.S.
complicity in the war crimes currently being committed by Israel is but one of
many acts of complicity – along with acts for which the U.S. is directly
responsible – that are causing great suffering and death around the world.By singling out the war crimes that are being
committed by Israel, I do not mean to diminish our responsibilities for the
events and conditions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, and elsewhere,
where our political, economic, and military aid is causing suffering and supporting
oppressive governments.

Once upon a time, U.S. support for Israel was the point of
the spear of U.S. imperialism.With the
invasion and occupation of numerous states in the Middle East in the past two
decades, Israel’s unique role changed, but as the U.S. presence is declining in
the Middle East, its relationship with Israel is returning to its past
condition, and we are called upon to raise our voices to try to reverse our
country’s reprehensible influence in the region.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

It has been quite some time since I posted an entry to this blog. So I thought I'd provide an explanation to the curious. I have been on professional leave (a.k.a. sabbatical) for a few months working on a book on Indian Buddhism. It has meant that I have not spent time reviewing the books I am reading, since what I am drawing from them presumably will appear in the book. For fuller disclosure, I'm appending below the draft preface for the book.

About a year ago, I was having
lunch with a co-worker and the topic of Buddhism came up.She told me that she really didn’t know much
about Buddhism, just that is was a very peaceful religion.I was tempted to give her a quick tutorial on
some of Buddhism’s main ideas, but decided it would be too pedantic for a lunch
conversation.I simply agreed with her
and mentioned that I had a long standing interest in Buddhism.She seemed to want me to say at least
something about Buddhism, but by then I had made my decision not to say
anything of substance.In retrospect, I
think I was a little worried that by speaking extemporaneously, I wouldn’t give
her a very clear or even sufficiently accurate account of Buddhism.In any case, I subsequently began thinking
about what I might say had I had time to formulate my thoughts.

A few weeks later, I started
sketching an outline of Buddhism’s main ideas and thinking about writing a
short essay for people like my co-worker.The sketch of the “short essay” soon began looking like several short
essays and maybe even a book.I doubt
that my co-worker really would want to read such a thing, but the idea of
putting my understanding of Buddhism in writing began to take over my thoughts.Finding time to do this would be
difficult.Thankfully, with the support
of my immediate supervisors and the Dean of Libraries at my university, I was
awarded a professional leave of absence to take on the project.

It has been more than forty
years since I first read a book on Buddhism.It was Buddhism by Christmas
Humphreys. I was about 15 years old and
had recently been confirmed into my mother’s Lutheran Church, but within less
than a year of my confirmation, my scientific frame of mind had led me to
reject the empirical claims in the Old Testament and to recognize the
untestability of Christianity’s theological claims.Only Christian morality seemed attractive
anymore.Nonetheless, my rather
philosophical disposition brought me to wonder about other religions.By chance, Christmas Humphreys’s book was
available on my father’s bookshelf.Reading it was a most rewarding experience.Here was a “religion” that seemed to rely on
neither speculative theology nor dubious empirical claims, and most of all, it
addressed in a clear and rational way two questions that were important to me:what is the world ultimately like and how can
I live a virtuous life?Perhaps more
importantly, it provided me with a prescription on how to reduce the normal
adolescent discontent that I was experiencing.

Since then I have read widely on
the topic, and Buddhism’s insights have helped me navigate some rather
difficult times.During college and
graduate school, I began picking up books on Buddhism at used bookstores,
selecting ones that seemed reasonably scholarly and which had some clear
connection to my developing understanding of Buddhism.Consequently, the foundation of my
understanding lies in works published in the latter half of the twentieth
century, particularly 1960-1980. The authors that had the greatest influence on
me were Edward Conze and D.T. Suzuki who ignited in me a strong interest in
Zen.Around 1990, I came across T.R.V.
Murti’s The Central Philosophy of
Buddhism.I was mightily impressed,
mainly because of its effort to connect Buddhism to Western philosophy,
especially Immanuel Kant for whom I had and still have a strong affinity.Murti’s book redirected my interest away from
East Asian Buddhism.Indian Buddhism now
had become my primary interest.With
this grounding, I went on to read English translations of a number of sūtras and
abhidharma texts that turned up in used bookstores.The Prajñāpāramitā
literature was of special interest.

Off and on, I have called myself
a Buddhist, but as I have had no formal training in Buddhism and never belonged
to a Buddhist community, calling myself a Buddhist always seemed a little
pretentious.Nonetheless, I now find
that I know more about Buddhism than I know about the Christianity.Furthermore, I find that the central insights
of Buddhism have become deeply ingrained in how I think and behave in the
world.In that sense, I guess I am a
self-taught Buddhist or perhaps more accurately, my teachers have been the authors
I have read, and my Buddhist community has been people with Buddhist
dispositions, whether they knew these dispositions were Buddhist or not.

At the same time, I am a
philosopher in the Anglo-American, analytic tradition.My Ph.D. dissertation dealt with contemporary
Western political philosophy, and over the course of twelve years, I taught
philosophy at one college and two universities, specializing in Moral Theory,
the Philosophy of Law, and, of course, Political Philosophy.I also had an abiding interest in Epistemology
and Metaphysics, particularly the justification of moral claims and the concept
of personhood – admittedly a rather wide ranging set of interests; too many to
be much of an expert on anything.

Often, I found the ideas that I
encountered and taught were similar to ideas that appear in the Buddhist
tradition, but I never made any serious attempt to describe those similarities
nor did I ever bring them into my classrooms.My hope, with this work, is that I will be able to show how several
important Buddhist ideas are akin to venerable ideas of the Western
philosophical tradition. Too often I
hear Western philosophers dismiss Eastern philosophy as wooly-minded
speculation. Too often I hear devotees
of Eastern philosophies dismiss Western philosophy as vain, irrelevant, and
superficial.I suspect that both are speaking
mainly out of ignorance.If I my work
can undermine those prejudices, even a little, I will consider it a success.

This work will attempt to reach
an educated general audience.It will
also restrict the number of footnotes to the sources upon which it is
based.I do this both to facilitate a
more fluid reading experience and because it is not always clear to me what
should be considered the generally accepted facts about Buddhism and what is
controversial enough to deserve citation.Instead, I will provide an annotated bibliography of the works that have
been important to the writing of this work and I encourage the reader to
explore these works in their own way.I
trust that after decades of reading, what has stuck in my brain is likely to be
those views that I have encountered on numerous occasions and therefore are
established reasonably well, at least in the English language literature.My lack of ability to read Sanskrit, Pāli,
Chinese, Japanese, or Tibetan is, of course, a great weakness in my ability to
sort out the truth in any other way than this regrettably casual method.I will, however, make use of a number of
foreign language terms throughout the text.After all, they are commonly imbedded in the English language texts and translations
that form the basis of this work.English works on Buddhism often make use of Sanskrit and Pāli
terminology, and the use of diacritical marks is not always consistent from one
author to another.So for the sake of
consistency, I will employ Sanskrit terms whenever they are available and I
will use The Princeton Dictionary of
Buddhism edited by Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Donald S. Lopez, Jr. as my
authority on spelling, capitalization, and diacritics with The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion edited by
Stephan Schuhmacher and Gert Woerner as a secondary resource. There will, of course, be instances when I
fail to follow this practice, but hopefully, they will be limited.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Edward Conze is among the most important Western commentators on Buddhism. He is particularly important for his translation of the Prājñapāramitā-sūtra or The Perfect of Wisdom which exists in three versions of 18,000, 25,000, and 100,000 lines. The Prājñapāramitā-sūtra is important to the Mahāyāna tradition and especially the Mādhyamaka school. T.R.V. Murti has called the Mādhyamaka the "central" philosophy of Buddhism, and no doubt it played a very important role in the advance of Buddhism from its early Abhidharma period to the more inclusive Mahāyāna phase; but Conze's career and understanding of Buddhism is not limited to this particular tradition and he demonstrates his broad understanding in Buddhist Thought in India.

Early on, Conze virtually apologizes for writing Buddhist Thought in India citing Theodore Stcherbatsky's monumental work Buddhist Logic. According to Conze, Stcherbatsky has already covered Conze's topic in much greater detail and at much greater length than Conze can provide, but Conze is being overly modest here. While Stcherbatsky's work is brilliant and covers much of what is ing Buddhist Thought in India, the latter work provides a clear and concise explanation of topics that Stcherbatsky struggles to communicate. Stcherbatsky's work focuses mainly on the philosophy of three late period philosophers: Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, and Dharmottara. In contrast, Conze covers the entire sweep of Indian Buddhism.

Buddhist Thought in India is divided into three large parts covering Archaic Buddhism, Sthavira Buddhism, and Mahāyāna Buddhism. His treatments are evenhanded and respectful of each tradition. He describes both the historical developments that lead to each of these successive periods and explains the critical concepts that characterized them. According to Conze, Archaic Buddhism, i.e, the Buddhism of Buddha and his immediate successors, can be recognized by what is accepted by all (or most all) subsequent traditions, e.g., the impermanence of all things, the ubiquity of suffering, and the doctrine of no-self. His treatment of these and other important Buddhist concepts provide the reader with an excellent summary of the main tenets of Buddhism.

In the Sthavira phase of Buddhism, a number of disagreements arose over the interpretation of the main tenets. This led to a period of highly sophisticated philosophical debate in which the "abhidharma" or higher learning animated numerous Buddhists schools. Conze's treatment of these debates is good. Among them is the challenge by the heterodox Pudgalavādan school that asserted the existence of persons, virtually rejecting the doctrine of no-self. Conze also explores various views of impermanence and especially causation, but also the nature of space, nirvana, enlightened beings, and path to salvation.

It is in the section on Mahāyāna Buddhism that Conze really shows his expertise. He treats Mahāyāna's three main schools with clarity and precision: Mādhyamaka, Yogācāra, and the School of Logic. The first of these schools presents a stark break from the Sthavira tradition, leveling powerful criticisms of its philosophical positions and opening up Buddhism to a more popular following. In a more positive vein, the Yogācāra school advanced clear alternatives to the Sthavira tradition, sometimes disregarding the arguments of the Mādhyamikas. Finally, the School of Logic applied extraordinary scrutiny to the basic Buddhist concepts to bring Buddhism to its highest philosophical pitch. The work of the Logicians is far more completely explained by Stcherbatsky in his Buddhist Logic.

Among the larger arguments presented by Conze in this work is that when trying to understand Buddhism, one should not be fooled into thinking it is a purely rational philosophy that is compatible with modern science. According to Conze, Buddhism is unquestionably a religion with the goal of saving the world from suffering. It's empirical and metaphysical positions reach beyond the narrow scope of modern science and to leave out these elements misses its most important contribution to the world.

Alan Mattlage

Alan Mattlage holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Illinois and an M.L.S. from the University of Maryland. He is currently volunteering with Citizens' Climate Lobby, a non-partisan, non-profit organization working for national legislation to put a price on carbon.